Oh bittersweetsoursalty December
by sofia-carby
Summary: Tony/Ziva. Season 7. It's December and it is cold all around and also in Ziva's heart. She receives tragic news and Tony is right there next to her. One shot filled with never-ending sentences and sour love.


**_Tony/Ziva. Tony/Ziva. Season 7. It is frozen all around in December. Ziva receives tragic news and Tony is right there. Oneshot with lots of bitter, sugary-edged love._**

**_Honestly, it's 3 a.m. and I'm high on music and frosty weather. I don't even know what this is. Think of it like the raw imagination of a teenager bending the wrong way. Please forgive and review_**. _**Also, watch out for weird grammar and words. **_

* * *

It is December. Her legs are never-ending milk limbs, curving at the soft bump of her knee and continuing up towards magic. Still she is wearing summer skin in the middle of winter, freckles still spoiling her aching bones. She places a Marlboro cigarette between her comfort lips, at first trying to light it at the wrong end. She laughs then, carbon dioxide pressing through the sorrow cloud that is suffocating, oh suffocating itself down her blister-painted throat. He is right there next to her, feet covered in frozen bits of air, teeth dancing with each other.

'I'm really sorry, Ziva.'

His voice is pillow-edged and it only fills her head with buzzing nothingness.

'It doesn't matter.'

Her boots mark the newborn snow and she drops her cigarette. She watches the tiny flicker of light wrap into the flakes of crystallized pieces of cloud, only leaving hot, dead ashes. She never knew death could be warm. The latest time he licked her heels he had been ice-knifed pain.

'Of course it does. Hey.'

His palms are on fire when he touches her shoulders, turning her frozen-stiff torso towards him. With each breath her bones feel like splinters of wood about to break. She fears her rib-splinters already have. Perhaps this is what dry-crying feels like.

His eyes are so, so close that she can see and blend in his winter-ocean colored eyes with bits and pieces of warm icicles.

'Your father died. That is a big deal.'

She cuts the ropes that entwines their gaze and looks up towards the building where she has worked hard, making her way through muddy, dark caves of a new country and new people and tongue twisting language. It all leaves her heritage raw and left on the other side of Earth.

'I do not have a home Tony. I never had a home with him. It does not matter.'

'Ziva …'

'Can't you just let it go? It's none of your business.'

She feels liquid in her eyes and she doesn't want him to see her sorrow-wrapped being. She takes a step back and suddenly there is nothing but air bathing in frost under her feet. She hits the dead ground hard and sky dances high, high above her; a blanket in dusty rose, overflowing with spilled flakes. Her back aches and her cheeks drown as he pulls her up, pressing his face into her frozen hair. For the first time in her life she breaks down and he picks the pieces right up and glues them to his own skin, drawing her pain into his limbs.

His car is warm. The warm breaths make her snow-soaked hair twist like curly fries at the ends. It also makes her sleepy. Her swollen lids feel like they have strings of rocks wrapped around them and her bones are dipped in jell-o. When sleep tries to drape her in warm, fuzzy blankets of soft blackness, she feels an overly hot hand slip entwine hers. Her nerves are suddenly wires on fire and it feels as if his fingers are making love with hers, oh the softness of it all. She glances, under lashes covered in sleep-pebbles, at his other hand, knuckles white against the black steering wheel, hard bones blending with cream-soft skin. She wonders if he is going in the right direction and oh please watch out for those puddles of frozen, oil-grazed water that can make you twist and break the wrong way. She doesn't think he knows she is awake and she doesn't tell him but smile so wide it hurts her heart.

She wakes and sleep refuses to take her back. Sweat-dipped blankets trap her and she kicks them away. They softly fall to the floor and she lies in the dark for a splinter of a slow minute. She delights in the way her ribs aren't pressed to her spine, the way air moves freely in and out through her just-parted, nap-swollen lips. It feels as if something has right-located someplace under her damp skin. She cannot figure it out and it's itching her mellow brain, still hungover with dreams. She crawls out of bed, the liquid-downy mattress squeaking under her like young, flexible teen-limbs. She is only wearing a t-shirt and it is wrinkled like old peach skin and hangs awkward-like from her shoulders like a flag breaking free from its flagpole in the non-wind.

She still cannot figure out why she is warm all over and under. She walks into the living room and to the window. Then life focuses and crashes down on heated body and mind and heart and limbs and oh oh. He is there. The milky moonlight falls through squinting blinds, bowing softly to hug the arc of his body. The blankets are strewn about his toes and his arms are folded pillow-like under his chin. His usually harsh-bending profile is painted softly from the digits of the alarm clock and his chest slowly rises and falls in the darkness, deep-end breathing accompanying it in the world's most perfect tact of life.

This is why, she realizes. This is why she is not feeling like her belly is pressing itself out of her throat, leaving her with a feeling of after-sick. This is why she doesn't have ice in her tendons and this is why, this is why she isn't covered in the after-coughs of fear. He is here.

She walks towards him. Without thinking, with her mind and heart no longer barbed-wired she lies down next to him. He has beautiful breathing and she wants to touch his dreams that flicker under his plumb-colored lids; quivering like a one-bodied couple after making sweet, toxic love. He sighs and clumsy grazes her face with his nose. She feels giggles shake her being and she smiles out loud in hushed whispers. She bow-like melts into the curve of his torso, her breath captured under his Adam's apple. She is more warm-bodied than ever but she cannot think of anything more wonderful. Her heart has swollen and hardly fits inside of her any longer, it bangs against the walls of her insides furiously. _Oh_ _dear god, _she says under her tight breath, _I love you_. Home is here, she realizes. It was here on the couch in her living room all along, waiting for her to finally stumble slip fall into the right direction. She feels salty-sweet waves under her feet and as sleep drowns her in swirling whirlpools she is already living her dream.

* * *

**_Thank you all for reading. You are the prettiest. Please review!_**


End file.
